In honor of mothers everywhere on this Mother's Day, here is a poem I wrote many years ago about my mother.
When Daddy took his
12-yr old only daughter
to the racetrack
Momma's teardrops
soothed the creases
of the white dress shirts
she was pressing with a 10-lb
American Beauty iron
Daddy played the horses
moving dollar bills
from his left pocket
to his right pocket
to pari-mutuel window
Master of a System
Losses
guaranteed to be slow
Daddy
buying just
a few more half-hours
from the humid hot kitchen where
he cooked pork fried rice
chicken subgum
egg foo young
9,390 days of his life
Daddy's winnings were like
the really good fortunes
found in the cookies that came with the bill
You could count on the bill to arrive
but you never counted on the good fortune
that would change your life
As we children grew up into away
and our refugee relations cut the umbilicals
so grew Daddy and Momma's good fortune
Dollars flowing from their 14-hr workdays
to their own account
finally
Daddy bought Momma a big diamond ring
When she waited tables
diners would grab her hand
saying
"You're no waitress"
and Momma would say
"I am owner of American dream"
3 comments:
Three cheers for your mom!! And thanks for sharing this.
When did you write it?
I don't have the date when I wrote it anymore on my computer. It may be stored elsewhere. My recollection is that the date was probably something like the last third of 1995. That was a period of a lot of poetry writing as I was dealing with my friend Jeanne's death from breast cancer.
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